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Morgan Stanley’s dissident shareholders got the first crack yesterday at making an argument to the major stockholders who likely hold the key to the embattled bank’s fate.

The so-called Group of 8, former senior executives at Morgan advocating a shake-up of senior management, held a conference call with the Council of Institutional Investors, a group representing 140 corporate and public pension plans with $3 trillion in assets. Combined, these investors hold about 37 percent of Morgan’s stock, according to Bloomberg.

The Group, led by former president Robert Scott, made their argument for the first 20 minutes of the call and took questions for the following 40 minutes, according to a Council spokesman.

The central complaint of the Group of 8 is that Morgan’s stock price has lagged its Wall Street peers for too long because Chairman and CEO Phil Purcell has not successfully integrated the old-line Morgan Stanley investment bank with the Discover credit card and Dean Witter retail operations.

The Group is also insisting that firm co-presidents Zoe Cruz and Stephen Crawford resign.

“We emphasized the fact that eight years was enough,” said one individual familiar with the Group’s call. Dean Witter Discover and Morgan merged in 1997.

A Morgan spokeswoman declined comment, as did the Group’s spokesman.

The Group was light on details as to how their plan would invigorate Morgan’s anemic stock performance, according to Elliot Schwartz, the director of research at the Council. “They didn’t give us a specific plan beyond what’s already been reported.”

The Group did emphasize, according to the person familiar with the call, that the continuing attrition under way at the firm would be problematic for the firm in the long run.

“Morgan isn’t just losing their management leaders, they are losing the people who actually brought in the major deals,” the person said.

Investors’ reviews were mixed. “We were interested to hear what they had to say,” said Michael Garland, corporate transactions coordinator for AFL-CIO’s office of investments, to Bloomberg.

But the New York State Comptroller’s office sees the whole thing as a family spat: “This is an internal struggle, not a corporate governance matter,” said John Chartier, a spokesman for New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, to Bloomberg.